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Wednesday, May 21, 2014

DIY or DIE

ingrid saying good-bye to her midnight swimming pool.

besides visiting the magical campus of bryn mawr college and seeing my otherworldly honey-girl ingrid graduate from her dream school in a vintage rabbit fur hood handed down over the past 125 years of bryn mawr's history, i came away from my visit to philly with some real inspiration.

and the rehearsal house for sun ra's arkestra, where they self-produced their work on saturn records,

i spent the drive from philly back to jfk thinking about how i need to break out of the system of literary journals and contests that is not really meeting my needs as an artist--i'm spending more money than i make on submission fees, more time on applications and submission than on writing, and mostly getting a lukewarm to no reception. i believe in my work, and do everything i can to make things that are new, not vain repetitions of the past, that are true to my own visions, impulses, beliefs, and love of the tactile world, but that doesn't seem to be enough for any kind of mass institutional embrace.

no biggie.

i just need to get braver and strike out on my own, where i generally do my best work anyway.